Re: Guessing?

Brian Selzer wrote:
> "paul c" <toledobysea_at_ac.ooyah> wrote in message
> news:xuk_j.165843$Cj7.9496_at_pd7urf2no...

>> Brian Selzer wrote:
>> ...
>>> Well, that's just it.  It has no consistent method for doing so.  ...
>>
>> It does, I gave one, ie., apply, ie., distribute algebraically, the union 
>> to the base relations in the view expression, then apply whatever 
>> constraints the definition has.  Works just as consistently for deletes to 
>> joins.
>>

Codd said: "The view S is actually the disjoint union..." but what the heck does he mean by "actually"? From the DBMS' point of view, he is lapsing into mysticism. As I said, it can't know this. All the dbms knows is that the two base names are different and it has been given no order to the effect that they must be disjoint. So, given what he wrote, the tuple(s) would show up in the view.

For argument's sake, suppose the dbms is aware of a declared mutual constraint that makes the two base relations disjoint. In my elementary

   approach, that would have the effect of 'emptying' both base relations and nothing at all would show up in the view. Personally I have no problem with this but I recognize that people who prefer certain niceties over a consistent logic do. I say that they can satisfy their whims at the programming language level, eg., by supporting certain exceptions or by other techniques.

It is becoming more and more apparent to me that the Assignment Principle is a case of wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

>> If it just
>>> guesses at the intent, 50% of the time it will guess wrong, and you'll 
>>> end up with garbage in the database.  As a consequence, queries like, 
>>> "How many suppliers are west of the Mississippi?" will return the wrong 
>>> answer.
>>> ...
>>
>> My whole point is that the dbms has no business guessing, just following 
>> orders.  Why anybody would imagine a dumb pre-programmed logical machine 
>> can know human intentions can only be pathological mysticism.  As they 
>> say, "don't believe everything you think".
>>

I could have put what you quote better by saying that if the dbms follows a consistent logic, no question of guessing comes up.

>>> But again, it should not allow the update if it has to guess, because 
>>> inevitably, it will guess wrong at least some of the time and the 
>>> database will end up corrupt.  That it has to guess is not a guess.
>>> ...
>>
>> It is mysticism to think that a dbms that follows its own consistent rules 
>> is somehow guessing.

I say it is willful to say "should be deterministic", it sort-of sounds good but from what I know it is contradictory with other goals people like Date talk about, such as making views behave the same way as base relations. If a dbms' logic admits boolean 'or', then traditional programming notions of determinism can't be satisfied. I'll take a consistent logic over niceties any day, even if that puts me in a minority - I'm already a member of many other minorities, in fact I'm a member of more minorities than the number of majorities most people I've met who were in majorities were in, even though many of them think I'm not even in a minority! Received on Mon May 26 2008 - 04:21:48 CEST